A true response would take way longer than the time they have and be much more personal than they wanted to know. The true answer is that most of the time it is great. It finally feels normal and I really like my classes and professors. But 15% of the time it straight up sucks. But no one wants to hear that college sucks. And if you are an optimist(like me) or a mathematician( not like me) my off-handed response of “really good” is an accurate average of my time away at school.

It’s widely said that a lot of a person’s personal growth and development happens during their college years. I don’t disagree. In my four months up at school, I know I have grown as an individual immensely. Just like those growing pains and growth spurts that you had as a kid, but instead these are emotional growth spurts, both of which sometimes hurt a lot.

People also say “Oh you will make lifelong friends in college.” Or my favorite, “The friends you make now will be your bridesmaids later!” No one tells you that for a while you will feel like you have fake friends and half friends. No one tells you that if you go to a place where you don’t know a soul, that sometimes it gets lonely. They never say, “You will start to wonder if you smell funny before you actually feel as though you have a couple solid friends.”

I think this provides many people with a false expectation for what college will be like. For example, fireworks will not go off in the background when you first meet your roommate and you will not be instant best friends. I know that I was not at all aware of the sub-clauses in those general comments everyone makes about college. I went into college thinking I would totally have it all together by day 10. Be involved, check. Make friends, check. Ace your classes, check. Grow, check. And by grow I do not mean in your waistline from the freshman 15, just to clarify.

Reality check: man was I mistaken. I never realized how much growing hurt. Being away from everyone I knew for close to 70 days, when I can’t think of a single time that I had spent without the presence of a familiar face before going to college, it hurt. I missed dinner with my family, doing homework and hearing my parents talk as they were preparing dinner, sharing a room with my sister, good morning hugs from my mom, I missed all of home. I missed the community of my small group, as I doubted that there was actually a single other Christian on the entire campus. I craved having someone with whom a look could be interpreted to speak 1000 words.

In the midst of this pain though, God always appeared. When I needed to meet another Christian on campus just to be reassured that they actually existed, in a totally random moment, I sat down next to one in a lecture. When it turned out that my dad had to fight a fire and couldn’t come to visit, two of my church friends from home to plan a trip to come visit. When I missed the companionship of my home friends, there was a friend waiting for me – I just needed to open my eyes and look around. God was always there in the pain of growing, and with his help I have grown with leaps and bounds.

I was also vastly unprepared for just exactly how long it would take to feel like I had really good friends. Even though I knew I was going somewhere where I wouldn’t know a soul, I thought, “It’s okay. I have already done this once before in high school when I went back to public school after homeschooling” what I failed to realize is that in high school I already knew some people. And they knew some people. So their friends became mutual friends and my friend circle expanded. In college it’s different. There is only one of me. I can only meet so many people and I can only spend quality getting to know you time with an even smaller number of people. I constantly have to remind myself to have grace with myself. Making friends takes a long time. Making best friends, let alone bridesmaid worthy friends, takes even longer. And in that long time, sometimes it gets a little lonely. But it’s okay. Everyone feels like that.

Give yourself grace, is what I have to keep reminding myself. Do you even remember how you made your last best friend? I know I can’t. Actually other than being nice, how does one make friends? I feel like it just happens naturally. Is there a point in time that marks the transition from friends to good friends to best friends? I think it all just takes time. It takes time to create the shared memories and inside jokes that come with a great friendship. It’s okay, friends will come with time. Hang in there.

I wrote this after first semester, and hesitated to put it up because it seemed really pessimistic, and that wasn’t what I wanted to portray-I knew it would get better, it was just slow going. Looking back on what I wrote after a full year under my belt, I still agree with what I was feeling, but I know it also gets better. Second semester I found my people-friends I knew were friends. I joined a sorority (though I never dreamed that I would), track season started, I found a home church, a bible study, and I became better friends with the people whom I had met during first semester. I knew how to juggle school, laundry, feeding myself, and having a social life way better. After two months of summer, though I am loving home, I miss my friends at school so much I almost wish school would start already just so I could see all my friends again. Wholeheartedly, I can say that school is great and I am really enjoying it.

Jumping for joy because life is good, school is over, and its finally summer.

In conclusion, a note to all the incoming college freshman-have grace with yourself. Realize its a big adjustment, and set your expectations accordingly. Have fun, and know that everything gets better after first semester. And a note to everyone who says, “College is the best time of your life!”-be careful, you might be creating false expectations in a nervous freshman’s mind. You might not remember the trials of the first couple weeks, because the good times have washed out all of those memories, but more than likely they were there.

One of my favorite teachers of all time wrote a blog post this weekend questioning the effectiveness of assigning summer homework and it was amazing. I suggest you all read it on his blog, The Readiness is All. At the end, he asks readers to share their thoughts in a comment or blog post response. In the beginning I was going to just leave a short comment and be on my way, but then I realized I had a lot more to say on the subject then would be courteous to leave in a comment. So here I am, blogging about summer homework, two-week into school. You would think my opinions would have died down after being in school for two weeks, but nope, I’m still really passionate in my displeasure about summer homework.

To start off, I have had summer homework in at least one class for the past three years. This past summer was amazing because college doesn’t have required summer homework(that I know of. Oh gosh, what if they do? Oh no.) and it was amazing. It was sharply contrasted by my sister’s summer in which she had three books to read for freshman honors english. Some might argue that the books weren’t super long or hard to read, but that isn’t the point.

The point is that she read all three books diligently and did not wait until the last-minute, but as the first day of school crept closer and closer, she got more and more stressed out. Talk about nerve-racking! Imagine starting a new school for the first time, one where everyone is bigger than you and there are a bazillion people everywhere. The stress of six new teachers, finding your classes, having somewhere to eat lunch, being able to find one’s friends in the sea of people, opening one’s locker…the list of stressors goes on and on. Then add the stress of an impending test and multiple essays to be done in class within the first week of school. Poor freshman, I did not want to be in her shoes.

The day before school started for her, I received probably 15 texts, 3 phone calls, and one long FaceTime call in which she was in tears, stressed about the test and essays. She was so nervous that she would fail and her teacher would think she was stupid and a failure, and even worse, have him think she didn’t even read the book. She had no idea what to expect except the teachers had given a list of nine essay prompts and said, “Be prepared to answer three of these in class on the first day of school.” I counseled her and told her that it would be extremely rare for a teacher(especially of freshman) to give a test on the first day because people are getting lost, coming in late, finding their assigned seat, etc. It just doesn’t work to give a test within those first fifty-six minutes. She still wanted to be prepared, so she set to writing an essay answering each of the prompts. She wrote three essays before I was able to convince her that if she felt that she needed to write the essays, to just write bullet points. She was so stressed.

I know teachers don’t sit around all summer thinking up new ways to torture their students(if they do, that’s a bigger problem than one of summer homework). So I would like to think that if they knew what summer homework put their students through, they might think twice about assigning it. Now I know, the reason summer homework is assigned is so that the class can hit the ground running and cover more material in the course of the year. There has only been ONE class that I have found this statement even partially true and the summer homework necessary. That class was AP Biology.

In AP Bio, we had four chapters to go over and do activities for on our own over the summer. It was all review from regular biology, which was a prerequisite so everyone completing the summer homework had taken it, AND we went over it all in class, so if anyone had questions they could get them answered. The only reason summer homework was assigned in the first place was that the AP test requires so much material to be covered, that one must start in the summer, just to have the time to cover all the required material adequately. Which is a whole other problem in itself. Why design a test in which all material cannot be covered within the school year? Oh well, that will have to be a completely separate blog post. The summer homework is justified in the extremely high pass rate that our school has on the AP Biology test.

What I don’t understand is assigned reading for English classes. And not to bash on the English department at my school; I enjoyed every English class I was in, but I still don’t understand the purpose of the summer reading homework they assign. I can only come up with two plausible reasons as to why summer reading homework would be assigned.

Reason One: The teachers want to scare of the faint of heart(in an academic sense). They don’t want to deal with students who don’t want to do the level of work required of a higher level English course. I don’t blame them. There have been many a time when I have been in class frustrated because some of my classmates did not want to put in the effort and work required of the class, thus unfortunately sometimes bringing the entire class down. I love being in a class with all academic thinking students just as much as a teacher like teaching one. When everyone is participating and putting something into the class, it transforms the class; discussions flow freely, group projects are no longer a pain, and the positives can go on forever. But I’m not so sure that assigned summer reading is going to solve that problem.

In fact, in assigning summer reading, one is more likely to scare away those students who are on the fence between excelling in a regular level English class and being challenged in an honors or AP class. You won’t scare away the students who are forced by their parents to take the upper level course, just to get into a “good college”. They will just read Sparknotes and take whatever grade they get on the first tests, because they don’t really care. You won’t scare away those kids that are naturally smart, but have no desire to put any effort into the course. All who get scared away are the timid ones, those unsure about their academic strength, but willing to put in the effort to get to that next level if needed.

Reason Two: Summer reading is important because it helps classes to cover more books in a year, which ultimately helps students on the AP Literature test as they will have more books to choose from when they are writing their free response essays. I’m pretty sure no teacher can wholeheartedly say this and believe it one hundred percent. No student in May of their senior year is going to recall a book they read over the summer before freshman year enough to write a fully developed essay on it. For one, it is highly likely that after reading that book over the summer, they took a test on it and never discussed it again. Which ultimately won’t help them on the AP test, because on the test one is required to examine the book on a deeper level than just knowing what the book was about. Class discussion of a book help set those themes in stone in a student’s mind, so that they can, hopefully, recall them when necessary. Also, speaking solely from my personal experience taking the AP Literature test; you read enough of a variety of books senior year that you can answer just about any prompt and relate it to one of the books read that year quite easily.

There are some many things students can do during the summer that would be way more worthwhile and thought-provoking than summer homework. I could list them out, but I think you get the picture. (If you need an idea of what I’m talking about, check out my previous blog post about what I did this summer!)

Just an example of one of the great things students could be doing instead of summer homework-enjoying the sunset!

In conclusion, I am going to echo the wise question of Mr. Theriault; why is summer homework still being assigned? If you have an answer, or see a reason for keeping it that I haven’t thought of, feel free to comment below!

People always said, “Oh yeah, once you are in college, you will miss having a home cooked meal every night.” And the true meaning of this statement never sank in until I was actually in college. I have eaten cafeteria food for a little less than a month, and I cannot wait to go home and eat my parents cooking. Not that our cafeteria food is bad, it just isn’t the food I’m used to. For all my UC school friends that still have another three weeks of summer, savor every bite of home cooked food. Appreciate it in its entirety. You will miss it.

I was assigned to live in a room with three other girls. I was very unsure of how it was going to turn out because living in a cramped space with complete strangers for nine months could go many ways. Then, the week before I left to go to school, one of my roommates emailed us and informed us that she toured the room and we have a full kitchen and bath in our room. Um, excuse me? What? How is this possible? As it turns out, we were randomly assigned to the Resident Director’s apartment that was converted into a student dorm. We basically won the entire housing lottery. It has been such a blessing to have a kitchen and be able to make my own food once in a while. The truth is that I wish I could make every meal for myself and not even have a meal plan. But alas, since I’m living on campus, I must have a meal plan and I should use it or it would be a huge waste of money.

Anyway, I have made eggs, chocolate chip banana pancakes, two batches of chocolate chip cookies, toast, and as of an hour ago, black bean vegan brownies. I even sent some cookies home to my mom and sister, because my sister made a comment over the phone that she and my mom were down to their last homemade cookie after sending me so many in a care package and how it was too hot to even think of turning on the oven to make more. So I sent them some dorm-made cookies because I wanted to repay the care package favor. Because really, no one should be without homemade cookies for too long, especially after school has just started. That cookie in your lunch very well could be the highlight of your day some days. (Sadly, this is the case once or twice in life; you have bad days that require a cookie to make it better.) I learned to check with the person who ships your package as to how long it will take for it to arrive, because once they got back home, they were a little crumbly and drier than expected. It’s the thought that counts, right?

Anyway, tonight I made plans with a friend(yes, I made a friend. Can you believe it?) to try out this new vegan recipe I found on Buzzfeed. We had no idea how it was going to turn out, but after being sick all weekend and therefore doing nothing but homework and sleeping, I had a little free time tonight to try it out.

The verdict is that they are super fudgy, rich, and dense, and completely and unexpectedly good. When I heard they had black beans in them I was a skeptic, but these are definitely brownies I would make again.

I stole this picture from Farmgirl Gourmet (link at the bottom of this post). It is way better than any picture I could have taken. Props to her for this excellent piece of food art. :)

Here is the recipe that I got from Farmgirl Gourmet, and then tweaked to fit the ingredients I had in my dorm:

1 cup of water (the original recipe calls for Guinness beer, but seeing as I am underage, that wasn’t going to happen)

3/4 cup chocolate chips (or nuts, if you so desire)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Drain the can of black beans into a colander, rinse the can clean and the beans until all bean juice is gone. Pour the cleaned beans back in the can and fill the can back up to the top with fresh water.

Puree the beans and water in the blender and set it aside.

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl: flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and instant coffee powder. Mix together. Make a well in the center to pour your liquids into.

Pour bean purée, water, and vanilla into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix together, being careful not to overmix.

Stir in chocolate chips or nuts and pour into a greased 9 by 13 pan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes and rotate the pan halfway through.

Let cool and enjoy! :)

Note: Depending on whether you like coffee or not, I would adjust the amount of instant coffee powder. The four teaspoons definitely makes it so you can taste the coffee-ness but not in a bad way. I don’t drink or enjoy coffee, but I loved the extra layer of flavor it gave the brownies and it complimented the chocolate very nicely(as expected). Also, I haven’t tried it with beer yet, but I am curious as to how it tastes, so when I get home I will be trying it again, this time with the beer. Lastly, I am not vegan, so I didn’t worry about using butter to grease the pan, so if you are vegan use canola oil or cooking spray.

PS Don’t worry, I promise I have made more than one friend. I mean, who doesn’t want a friend who will bake them yummy goodies all the time? :)

This is embarrassing. My blog has needed some love since my last post in May and I am just getting around to it. Awesome. I guess its a sign of a great summer if I never seem to have enough time to sit down and finish a blog post! I have a bunch of friends who are babysitting over the summer(and alas this post is late as summer is rapidly drawing to a close) and I thought I would blog about my favorite babysitting activity and maybe give them a new thing to do with the kids they watch.

I was babysitting a six-year-old and a two and a half-year old for six hours. I had a brilliant idea to do special things for their parents while they were out, but was completely at a loss on what I could do, without it being super involved and too hard for them. Luckily, my wonderful mother is super crafty and creative, and she suggested making truffles!

She pulled out her handy-dandy, cooking with little ones cookbook, and flipped right to the recipe. It was perfect. It only called for three ingredients and did not require dipping the truffles in chocolate to make a shell. I went to the store, picked up some fun sprinkles to decorate with, changed my clothes into something that could get messy, and drove on over.

Once I got there, they already had mugs to paint for their grandmas and aunts, so we painted those first and they turned out really super cute. I am always amazed at the creativity of little ones, that have no boundaries and confinements of their imagination. They create so freely, and here I am just more than ten years older, struggling to make something I think is beautiful, because I am constantly comparing my masterpiece to those of people far more gifted than I.

Creativity at its finest!

There is a painting of mine hanging in our guest bathroom. Accompanying it is a picture that my younger sister painted. She laughs when she sees mine; it truly is a comical sight. We painted them in kindergarten; mine has a yellow sun, green grass, a blue flower with a dark purple stem, and a random red streak on the left side of the stem of the flower, because no one had told me that red lines don’t go in pictures, just cause you wanted to use the color and had no where else to put it, or that flowers don’t have dark purple stems and blue petals. My sister’s painting is more normal. It has green grass, a red tulip with a green stem, a blue sky and a yellow sun. I always took pride in that picture because I thought, “I taught my sister how to paint.” Reflecting on this though, I realize that there is no right or wrong way to create art. That’s why its called art; it doesn’t have to please everyone and not everyone has to understand it, as long as you, the creator, is happy and proud of your work.

Anyway, that was a long tangent. After painting we ate some awesome dinner, and then got out the ingredients for truffles. The two-year old helped me pour the different sprinkles into little bowls, and the six-year-old helped mix the cocoa powder, cream cheese, and sugar together. We set out big sheets of wax paper, in case it got messy and to set the finished truffles on, and then we got started! I rolled the truffles and put them in the sprinkles they chose, and then they picked up the bowl and rolled the ball around in the sprinkles to cover it. On the first ones, they used their hands to roll it around, instead of just holding the bowl and rolling the ball in the bowl, and their hands ended up covered in chocolate. So we switched methods, so that my hands were the only ones thoroughly covered in truffle mix. They had so much fun and the truffles turned out amazing! They were interested and involved the entire time and loved every minute of our baking adventure! I got a lovely text from the girl’s mother after I had left, saying how she was so surprised and how thankful she was. Don’t worry, I had talked to their father beforehand to see if it was okay.

They turned out so super cute!!

I ended up doubling the recipe because a single batch only makes eight or so truffles and I wanted each girl to be able to make more than four. They ended up making ten each, so maybe I was rolling them smaller than the recipe suggested. Anyway, here is the recipe:

Chocolate Truffles

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

¼ cup powdered sugar

¼ cup cream cheese

sprinkles

¼ cup chopped nuts(optional)

1. Combine cream cheese, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder(and nuts if desired) in a mixing bowl. Stir until well mixed.

2. Roll the mixture into marble sized balls in the palms of your hands.

3. Pour sprinkles into a bowl and then roll truffles around in them to coat.

4. Serve in paper candy cups or on a cute decorated plate!

Note: Subsequently, I tried to make sugar cookies with them, and they were interested for the first couple cookies, but lost interest very quickly and then i was scrambling to finish the cookies on my own. So I guess the interest levels vary from day-to-day (duh).

Robert Fulghum wrote a poem back in 1990 titled All I Ever Needed to know I Learned in Kindergarten. In it he writes,

“These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life – learn some and think some

and draw and paint and sing and dance and play

and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,

hold hands, and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.

Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:

The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody

really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even

the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die.

So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books

and the first word you learned – the biggest

word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.

The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.

Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any of those items and extrapolate it into

sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your

family life or your work or your government or

your world and it holds true and clear and firm.

Think what a better world it would be if

all – the whole world – had cookies and milk about

three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with

our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments

had a basic policy to always put thing back where

they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you

are – when you go out into the world, it is best

to hold hands and stick together.”

As I was pondering what to do for my senior project and reflecting on the abundance of lessons I learned in high school; I realized I really wanted to write a letter similar to Fulghum’s poem to both freshman me looking back, and my sister as she is going to be a freshman next year. Here is what I came up with.

Dear Freshman me,

All you really will ever need to know, you’ll know.

and even on the perchance that you don’t know,

being the resourceful girl you are, obviously you’ll Google it.

Knowledge will not be found in the $100,000 of college tuition debt, but rather in the classroom, on the playing field, and in everyday life. These are the things you will learn by graduation day:

Everything is better with food.

Attitude is everything.

Find a couple of things you love and apply yourself to them.

YOLO is not the best way to make major life decisions.

Stress doesn’t get you anywhere in life.

A smile and a greeting can make a persons day.

Don’t give up; on people, on life, or in class.

Ask questions.

Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself.

Dream big, because if you reach for the moon and miss you’ll land on a star.

Take risks.

Waiting until the night before to start anything is a bad idea.

Don’t be afraid of change, change is healthy.

Make friends, and “When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together”.

Family is everything. They have been yours from day one, and they will always love you. Appreciate them. Spend time with them. Savor those dinnertime moments, those times where you are laughing so hard it hurts. Soon you will be moving over 1000 miles away, eating dinner without your family; your presence at the dinner table thoroughly missed.

But take heart everything will be okay. You will still be able to Facetime, go home on the holidays, go on family camping trips, stay home for summer, and sleep in your own bed in your own house. You can still go home and eat home food; you don’t have to be a vegetarian forever.

Cherish those times with your sister. Those she may sometimes feel like an annoyance, imitation is the highest form of flattery. Go easy on her and make memories; she is only going to be an innocent middle schooler for so long. Have fun. Take adventures together. Be spontaneous.

When you start following these tips, there is one very important thing that you must do. Can you guess what it is?

Have fun. Though that’s a good one; it’s not the most important piece of advice I have for you, because you will have fun anywhere and with anything. The biggest regret you will have is not taking enough pictures. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so take pictures on top of pictures on top of pictures. There is no such thing as too many pictures, so snap away. Capture the memories, you are only in high school once.

This past week was Teacher Appreciation Week, and in honor of it, I am posting something I wrote about my current English teacher, Mr. Theriault. He is the reason I started blogging in the first place, and I couldn’t be more grateful to him for forcing me to do so.

“Young lady, do you need to change seats?” It was the first day of school my sophomore year, and I had completely forgotten to bring lined paper. I had quietly turned around to my friend sitting behind me to ask for a spare sheet so I could write our essay on the assigned reading we had over the summer. I was in shock and intimidated that I was scolded for asking for a piece of paper, especially on the first day of school. I was so scared of my new English teacher that I left class that day thinking, “Okay, breathe and relax, if it doesn’t get better, you can always switch to another class.”

Switching to another class would have been one of the biggest mistakes in my academic career, if not my life. I know it seems cliché, but it is true. I would have missed out on having an extraordinary teacher who does not just teach English, but teaches life. Shortly into the school year, amidst his ridiculously hard bi-weekly quizzes, he told us, “I am going to grade you on your effort in this class. The standard measures of competence and effort [by tests and quizzes] will have less value in my class; not so you can slack off, but so you can stretch yourselves to new levels without fear of damaging your grade because of it.” Though his class is one of the most challenging classes I have had, it is addicting; there are too many days in which I walk out of his classroom, wishing I could stay in English all day, thinking “This is way more worthwhile and meaningful than any of my other classes.”

It was in his class that I first learned how to properly read and annotate a book and was able to enjoy analyzing the syntax of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. It was in his class, that student presentations became something to look forward to, instead of a waste of a class period, as more often than not, they came with goodies and plenty of audience interaction which kept it interesting. It is in his class, and really only in his class, that I feel completely at home.

The wheels are always turning in Mr. Theriault’s head, thinking of how to make himself a better teacher, his lessons more fruitful, keep students more engaged, and how to make education less daunting. He is never afraid to share what he is working on with his students as well as the rest of the world through his blog and Twitter. Mr. Theriault has taught his students to share their work and thoughts, by assigning weekly blogging and a twenty percent project every year. Through blogging, I have written more this past year than ever before in the entirety of my high school career altogether. He has given us the freedom to develop our own voice, something that is so hard to teach, yet so critical for higher level writing.

Mr. Theriault is one of the only teachers I have encountered that will take time out of his class period, his precious fifty-four minutes of teaching time, to ask how students are doing. He will ask about the sports events that he couldn’t make it to and other school related topics, but he will also ask students how they are doing personally. If he sees that someone seems down, sick, or just exhausted, the first thing he says is, “Is there anything I can do to make your day better?”. From chocolate and hot tea to sharing half of his lunch, he is always there for his students. He realizes that sometimes his class isn’t the most important thing in our lives, and that our overall well-being is much more important than anything he could teach in an hour. He genuinely cares for his students.

I have been blessed to have Mr. Theriault as my English teacher both sophomore and senior year. As the number of days left until graduation dwindles down, it is a bittersweet feeling; the excitement of graduation and college combined with the sad realization that my time in Mr. Theriault’s class is coming to an end. I can see why he always has college students coming back to visit him; days in his class are treasured memories and visiting him brings them all back. Mr. Theriault makes a huge impact on student’s lives every year, and I can only dream of a world in which all teachers were as committed, caring, and compassionate as he is.

“Mr. Theriault, can we take a picture?”“Sure, how do you want to do this? Selfie style?”“Okay”He laughs. “I never take selfies”Personally, I think this one turned out great.

In the past one and a half years, I have received right around 36.4 pounds of college mail. 36.4 pounds!!!! Makes me wonder how many trees were murdered in the hopeful, but probably highly unsuccessful, quest to find applicants.

November came and the first round of applications were due. I had been writing essays all summer, but the date still crept up on me a little. Never the less, I got them all in on time, and began waiting. I have never been so excited to receive mail in my life. Eagerly, after about two weeks, every day, after practice, before setting foot inside, I would peer nervously into the mailbox, hoping that there was a big fat letter in there for me. Then one day, two big, fat, official looking acceptance letters came. It was like Christmas had come a couple of weeks early. I was beyond excited! I knew for sure that I had somewhere to go next year. What a relief.

December and January were filled with round two of applications, the holidays, and family. A couple more acceptance letters came in, and I was excited to see how my hard work was paying off. In late January, my family took a trip to visit Baylor and Vanderbilt. We all fell in love with Vanderbilt. My sister said,” Might as well buy my sweatshirt now, cause this is where you are going.” She made a bet with me before the trip, that for some reason I don’t recall making, but the bet said that if she called the school I ended up attending, I would have to buy her a sweatshirt. The school and the trip were perfect. Well, except for the fact that it was 17 degrees the entire time we were there. (Side note: I have never been so thankful for the humidity and 60 degree weather that we had when we got back home). I was so excited to have found my number one school.

February brought more waiting, scholarship essays, more thinking, and a trip to University of Denver with my dad. Denver was amazing. My dad and I had a great time touring the campus and exploring the area around Denver. It was such a nice opportunity to be able to go on a daddy daughter trip. We were both impressed with the program that DU had, and especially a selective leadership program in which, if admitted, you live and take classes on leadership with a group of 65 other students, and in the end graduate with a minor in Leadership Studies.

An Adventure Into the Mountains

Red Rocks, CO

Red Rocks, CO

April has been an interesting month. I didn’t get into Vanderbilt and Brown, both of which I was surprisingly okay with. All throughout my college search and application process, both my parents and my prayer has been that God would guide me to where He wanted me. Though it stung a little to get those first rejection letters, I decided to not look at them as rejection letters, but as God closing doors, so He can lead me to the right ones. In the end of April, my mom, sister and I took a girls trip to tour my final two schools: Lewis and Clark College and University of Puget Sound. We saw the schools, explored some state parks, and took in the sights of Washington and Oregon.

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I got to meet up with the track coach at Puget Sound to talk about the possibilities of running on his track team. I went into the meeting expecting to be rejected politely because I am a JV level athlete. Not exactly the kind of caliber that I assumed all college coaches would be looking for. I was taken aback when he said that he doesn’t look at times for incoming freshman, all he requires is a good attitude and a willingness to put the effort into getting better. He never asked for my marks and PRs. And the team was so welcoming and just plain awesome.

By the end of the trip, I had narrowed my choices down to Denver and Puget Sound. When I got home, I found out that I was wait listed for the leadership program at Denver and there was a technical difficulty with my application for the Honors program at Denver as well, so I wouldn’t know until after Commitment Day (May 1st) if I would be able to participate in those programs.

After some more research, prayer, deliberation, and lengthy conversations I decided last night on University of Puget Sound. The funny thing about it is that, I applied to UPS last-minute because I thought the campus was pretty, had heard great things about it at a college fair for it and its sister schools, and they offered me a free application. When I applied, I had no intention of actually attending. I guess the pounds of mail, billions of emails, and the numerous phone calls each year are successful; they helped put Puget Sound on the radar for me, and I couldn’t be happier about my decision.

When I was growing up, my parents had a rule for my sister and I (well they had many) but the particular one had to do with commitment. They told us that we could only choose one sport/ extracurricular activity at a time. We were not the over committed family that always had 3 soccer games, a softball game, church, and a girl scout meeting all in a weekend. The most I got away with doing was soccer and girl scouts at the same time. And this was permitted only because Girl Scouts met once a week for maybe two hours at a time. It wasn’t a huge time commitment, my parents believed it was important, and I liked it. They wanted to preserve family time and their sanity. I am so grateful that they did.

But I am noticing a growing trend that concerns me. First in society as a whole; that we are way to busy. I am totally guilty of this, so I am not preaching from any pulpit, that’s for sure. Secondly, many people, especially high schoolers, are over-involved and under-committed. Now, hear me when I say that. Over-involved and under-committed; how is that even possible?

To answer that question, I ask you to reflect upon what most colleges are looking for in a competitive applicant. They want a well-rounded individual, who has played a varsity sport, been the president of a club, while being involved in two other clubs, been involved in the community, and on top of all that maintained stellar grades and achieved great test scores. I feel like they are asking for their applicants to dabble and under commit to everything, just so they can attain that “over-committed” level that colleges look for. If there was a common mantra among current high school students, I’m pretty sure it could be, “Just do it for the app.”

The frustrating thing about this over-involvement is that instead of picking a couple of things that they love and committing to them and being super involved with them, students are doing things for the label, just so they can say they are “involved” on their college application. AND COLLEGES SEEM TO ENCOURAGE THIS! Though I’m sure every admissions counselor would say, “We would much rather you be deeply involved in a few things that you are passionate about, instead of a bazillion different things”; the activities section on the common app begs to differ. There are ten different sections to fill out describing your different activities and involvements in high school. And if you only fill out four of them, that’s leaving a lot of blank space on the application that decides your scholastic fate. Thus, students are driven to over involve themselves and under commit. It is impossible to be completely committed to ten different activities, maintain good grades, have some semblance of a social life, and still sleep for the 8-9 hours recommended for teenagers.

What is created is a “Do it for the college application” attitude. And one can assume how frustrating and annoying this attitude can be. Try taking already slightly noncommittal teenagers, throwing them into ten different activities, and telling them to be committed to every one. What you get is the bare minimum, a warm body in meetings, brain only half there, constantly thinking of all the other things that have to be done. The expectation is that we are able to do it all, while in reality we have no chance.

Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” There is never a time that I am not floored by the evidence of God’s creation in nature, whether it be when I am looking at Grand Prismatic Springs in Yellowstone, or a tiny protein with a very specific job in the body, essential for survival. When one looks at the specificity of everything in nature, it is very hard(impossible for me) to believe that creation happened randomly. If you can’t tell, I am a total science nerd. I am unashamedly and completely fascinated by microscopic organelles in cells, the stars in the sky, and the entire universe.

That being said, I watched this video at a Campus Crusades for Christ meeting on Thursday and had to share and write about it. I loved it for so many reasons. The first being that it wove science and faith together seamlessly with great analogies. Second, it realigned my view of myself and the world as a whole. I was reminded of just how significantly insignificant I truly am and that I am a child of a great big God; the God who created the universe, who breathed the stars into existence.

“Though we are but a vapor, you and me, and tiny and frail, we are marked by Majesty, and we have been created in the very image of the God who breathes out the stars and put the universe into place, you and I are fashioned and formed and ordained by the God of all creation. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Louie Giglio repeatedly compares the Earth to a golf ball, with every person being but a speck on that tiny golf ball. But because we are set apart by God, He has given us tools and a task to accomplish. It makes me so humble to think that, I, just a tiny speck on the golf ball of the Earth, have been thought into creation, with a purpose, by a God who made the entire universe in its vastness.

His message is long, but bear with me, it is way worth it. Feel free to comment with your thoughts or send me a message, I would love to know what you think. Without further ado, I give you Louie Giglio.

I have a confession. Well, its more like a giant secret that I have held in so long, so close to my heart, that my parents don’t even know it. NO ONE knows it. I have always been afraid to reveal it, because of what society might think. Who am I kidding, it’s not what they will think, it is what they WILL SAY. We are so judgemental as society, and note I say we because I am totally included in this group. Though I try to work on it, it just naturally happens; I see someone and instantly categorize them based off of what they look like. It’s terrible.

Anyway, today I decided, I have had enough. I will not hide part of who I am any longer. So here it goes.

I want to be a plumber when I grow up. There I said it. I am just so fascinated by how all the pipes work together to deliver water to the various places in a house. How could someone even be smart enough to think of all that? And all the work in the dirt, mud, and water sounds right up my alley because I love the mud. And guess what? They only work when called and they get paid by the hour AND they get to charge whatever they want. Combine all of those positives and you have the recipe for my dream job.

Now, I know what you were thinking. Most people would think, “Okay, but why don’t you be a doctor or go to college first and then decide what you want to do?” Watch the spoken word video, linked below. If you are short on time, just watch the first two and a half minutes or so, otherwise I highly recommend watching the entire video. It is amazing and brings me to the verge of tears every time I watch it .

“If you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself then get a better mirror, look a little closer, stare a little longer, because there is something inside you that made you keep trying despite everyone who told you to quit” -one of my favorite quotes from the video

“They asked me what I wanted to be and then told me what not to be.” This is the epitome of the state of our education system in America. From day one of kindergarten, the expectation of the student is that they will grow up, go to high school, take a full load of AP classes, go to a prestigious college, and then become a doctor, engineer, or lawyer. The driving force behind every class, lecture, presentation, and guidance appointment in high school is to prepare students for college. Look even in recent news, and the Presidency is pushing for higher education(college of some type) for everyone. The attitude that comes out of this is that it is absurd for someone not to go to college. Completely absurd, in their minds.

Well, what happens when everyone starts going to college like society is encouraging and calling for? Many things. One, we lose people going into the job fields that don’t require a college degree, but still are necessary to keep society functioning. For example, my dad doesn’t have a college degree. Yet, he is a fire captain and has worked in the fire service for 17 years. He is on a National Disaster Management Team and gets sent all over the Western United States to manage the resources(people and machines) when fires and other natural disasters occur. He may not know how to help me with my AP Calculus homework, but he is one of the smartest people I know. So, remind me why everyone MUST go to college? So they can do well in the world? To that I ask what is the definition of doing well in the world, being happy, having money, or something else? It all depends on the person, whom defines how well they are doing for themselves.

Second, if everyone goes to college, then does it not just become a continuation of high school, and the only way to be competitive in the job market will now be to get a Masters or a PhD? It doesn’t make sense to encourage every student to go to college, putting themselves in debt, when every job does not require a college degree.

In my case, as I do not actually dream of being a plumber, I need to go to college to pursue a job in the field that I desire. I hope to major in Biology with an emphasis on genetics, because, in my opinion, genetics is the medicine of the future. Though I do not want to be a doctor, I do need to go to college in order to even have a chance of getting a job in genetics.

Simply put, we need to stop instilling in our kids that the only way to succeed in life is by going to college. There are other ways to succeed, and we need to be open to them. Some of the biggest advancements in our history have come from relatively “unschooled” people. Maybe its time we stop focusing on standards, and believing that without school education is impossible, and realizing that school isn’t the be all end all that it’s often cracked up to be. There are several ways to get to the one end that we all desire- a happy life.